Leaders near deal to release $7.9M in brownfields funds
Leaders near deal to release $7.9M in brownfields funds
BY BOB CONNER Gazette Reporter
First published in the Schenectady Daily Gazette, March 6, 2008
State leaders are close to signing off on a long-delayed memorandum of understanding to unlock $7.9 million in brownfields remediation money.
Several projects in the Capital Region stand to benefit, according to New Partners for Community Revitalization, a New York Citybased group focusing on brownfields redevelopment. The biggest local grant is $150,000 that would pay for a Rotterdam Junction revitalization plan, according to state Department of State data cited by New Partners.
The memorandum would release funding allocated in 2005 and 2006 through the Brownfields Opportunity Area program. The law required the governor and the leaders of the Senate and Assembly to sign off on an agreement approving the projects, but their signatures have been delayed for unexplained reasons, according to New Partners leaders who held a news conference at the Capitol this week.
Scott Reif, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick, said Bruno signed the memorandum this week, and confirmed that it would release $7.9 million.
Sisa Moyo, a spokeswoman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, said his signature is expected soon. Michael Whyland, a spokesman for Gov. Eliot Spitzer, said the governor, too, is expected to sign.
The money is mostly going for studies. The local grants include two in Cohoes, for $75,301 and $39,604, and three in Albany, one for $80,363 and two for $67,809 each.
Another grant would go to Amsterdam, for $58,500, for five sites “within the city’s northern and eastern neighborhoods.” One goal there would be “the return of empty or dilapidated mill structures back to productive use generating new employment opportunities and tax revenues,” according to the Department of State.
In Rotterdam Junction, the study will evaluate 570 acres. According to a document submitted by the town in 2006, the area is near public well fields, and the plan is “to achieve a land use strategy that is compatible with protecting the Great Flats Aquifer [Schenectady Aquifer].”
Other goals include boosting economic development, historic tourism, and recreation.
The site is in the vicinity of the Mabee Farm and the Canalway Trail. Town Planner Peter Comenzo said the former Bonded Concrete gravel mine and a former auto yard present brownfields issues to be dealt with.
“We’re very excited,” he said, when told the grant is apparently going to be approved.
The New Partners leaders said they support brownfields program reforms proposed by Spitzer, which would link the tax credit program to the BOA program, providing additional incentives to redevelop BOA sites. However, they said they are not proposing that all brownfields funding be directed through the BOA program.
The New Partners leaders also said they support a provision of the Senate Republican Upstate Now legislation which would give sole responsibility for the BOA program to the Department of State. Currently, State shares the program with the Department of Environmental Conservation, a setup that New partners and others say has contributed to delays. No funding for the BOA program has been released since 2005, according to New Partners.